The 3D fibre product demo plant jointly owned by Metsä Group's innovation company Metsä Spring and Valmet was inaugurated in Äänekoski on Monday, 22 August 2022. The demo plant was inaugurated by Minister of Science and Culture Petri Honkonen, President and CEO of Metsä Group Ilkka Hämälä and CEO of Valmet Pasi Laine. The new Muoto® product, which is manufactured by the demo plant, is a significant new opening in the packaging market. Made from renewable and sustainably grown wood raw material, Muoto is an excellent alternative to plastics in many end uses, for example food packaging of different sizes and shapes. "It is important that new types of value-added products are developed from Finnish pulp, of which Muoto is a great example. It is a packaging material made from fossil-free raw materials for people's everyday life. We continue the development work towards a broader business," says Ilkka Hämälä.

The project consists of building a state-of-the-art recovery boiler by 2020 and a new steam turbine by 2022. This equipment will reinforce the industry-leading position that Smurfit Kappa Nettingsdorf currently holds, by virtue of having the lowest energy consumption in the paper industry. The new boiler will produce energy out of biomass, reducing CO₂ emissions at the Nettingsdorf mill by 40,000 tonnes, which represents a 1.5% reduction in Smurfit Kappa Group’s total CO₂ emissions. Smurfit Kappa recently announced in its 2016 Sustainability Development Report that it has already cut CO₂ emissions by 23%, well on the way to meeting its 2020 target of 25%. Click Read More below for additional detail.

Tetra Pak has been named the inaugural Servitization Innovation Leader of the Year by the Advanced Services Group (ASG), the world’s leading authority on servitization based at Aston Business School, United Kingdom. This recognition highlights Tetra Pak’s pioneering role in applying advanced, outcome-based service models to the food and beverage sector. Such models provide customers with increased operational flexibility, predictable production costs and access to energy and water-efficient technologies, without the traditional capital investment barriers. Unlike conventional leasing or rental models, Tetra Pak’s offering is tailored to each customers’ operations, data-driven and designed to adapt over time as customer needs evolve. The Servitization Awards celebrate excellence in transforming business models through advanced services, recognising individuals and organisations that drive meaningful innovation. The Servitization Innovation Leader of the Year category honours a company that has successfully embraced servitization to unlock new forms of customer value, while serving as a benchmark for best practices and a catalyst for wider industry transformation.